When?
When will this program, which can’t catch a break anywhere under any circumstances, break through against one of the elite?
It wasn’t Saturday night. Ohio State delivered the latest dagger in what has been a life full of them for the Fighting Irish fan, scoring a touchdown as time ran out to beat ND 17-14 in a game it felt like the Irish had won a dozen or more times. And yet, did anyone really believe it would happen?
The defense did (almost) everything it could
Apart from what appeared to be a blown assignment by JD Bertrand that allowed TreVeyon Henderson to break contain and get loose for a long touchdown run, Notre Dame’s defense was damn near perfect for most of Saturday night. The Buckeyes were unable to break the explosive plays they wanted because ND’s secondary, particularly Benjamin Morrison, was outstanding. Javontae Jean-Baptiste played an unbelievable game, getting in the face of Ohio State QB Kyle McCord at times and run stuffing at other times.
The run defense was, if not outstanding, certainly good enough, getting some timely stops and preventing big plays besides the one.
But.
DJ Brown dropped two interceptions. ND couldn’t stop McCord from completing a 3rd and 19 dropping eight into coverage when it mattered most. And someone (or multiple someones) screwed up something awful on the final play. It appears ND had 10 men on the field, and the one missing was kind of important.
Notre dame missing an 11th guy on final play?
Glaring hole on left side of DL pic.twitter.com/rCxcDhqtre— Jason McIntyre (@jasonrmcintyre) September 24, 2023
Marcus Freeman apparently said in his postgame presser that he knew that they were down to 10 men but didn’t want to risk a penalty by running the 11th on. That sounds like a lame freaking excuse to me, but I’m more concerned with how the heck 10 guys were on the field in the first place.
Imperfection on offense
What’s clear by now is that ND has to be essentially perfect to win one of these games. They aren’t getting lucky bounces, second chances or anything of the like if they screw something up. (The absurd luck of that deflected duck landing in the hands of Cade Stover for a big gain felt like a cosmic eff-you to any ND fan who felt like the ridiculous bad fumble luck of the first few games would turn in their favor.)
That’s why I felt like ND was sunk the second they failed to score for the second time in the first half despite getting into position to do so twice. A failed fourth-down and a missed field goal kept ND from scoring in the first half when it should have.
The response in the second half from the offense was something to witness. After the Henderson TD made it 10-0 and seemingly snuffed the Irish out, all ND did was go right down the field and score. And then they did it again, from 96 yards away, on an unreal drive that looked, at the time, like a clear statement of what was going on.
The offensive line was fantastic. The oft-maligned ND guards held up far more than any reasonable person could’ve expected. Every running back did their job. Mitchell Evans, throughout the game, was unbelievable. It’s hard to find any fault with the offensive second half.
Until.
Until the inexplicable play that ended up with Sam Hartman being yanked down in the backfield. Then the screen call that almost allowed J.T. Tuimoloau to be a hero again for the Buckeyes. As much as the 4th and 1 end-around call by Ryan Day that ND snuffed out appeared to be the Buckeyes flinching, that sequence felt like Gerad Parker flinching back.
If you’re looking for positives
ND was the better team tonight until nut-crunch time. You could argue they were better by a fairly significant margin. It doesn’t mean jack on the scoreboard, of course. But at least there’s that. And that absolutely was not the case at any point of last year’s matchup.
But nut-crunch time is where games are won.
That’s about all I’ve got. Next week College GameDay will be in Durham as ND prepares for the letdown game to end all letdown games. I don’t know how Marcus Freeman bounces back from this one, but he’ll likely never get a clearer opportunity to display what kind of football team he can deliver in that kind of situation. It should be interesting. That is, if I can bring myself to watch it.
Shooting from the hip here, but this was a total gut punch. Worst since the Bush push and at least in the moment, feels more long term deflating. At that point we at least had hope in Weis, crazy though it seemed, here it feels like this was a last gasp. A program defining loss, to be very dramatic. If we couldn’t do it with an ideal QB starter, one who was better than Ohio State and their uber-talented WR corps, then will we ever? It really does feel like this was out shot and we came up short. Again.
Parker’s gameplan was too conservative for my taste but all in all I’m mostly fine with it. Defense, I can’t hate on them because realistically they did great, but Golden, man. He’s a good DC. But not a great one. Not a good enough one for the other disadvantages we have going on. And my worry is he’s too good to get rid of without risking getting someone a good deal worse but not good enough to help get us out of being an also-ran.
I noticed that the right side of our D looked super light as OSU prepared to run the final play. Not going to say I noticed it was only 10, but there was a lot of open space over there and ugh, just saw it coming a mile away.
EDIT: Wanted to also add the refs were pretty crap on spotting the ball and cost us some first downs/drives too, which in a game like that makes it even worse.
EDIT EDIT: also the 3rd and 19 – rushing three? Are you kidding me? McCord might not be a huge game changer himself but he is a former top 50 commit and that WR room is too deep to let them have all day
i didn’t notice there were only 10 because that was the 2nd play in a row without a down DL on that side. The play before i was worried, but aOSU went the other way…but to do that twice in a row? The worst DE we have would’ve stopped the RB 6 inches earlier and time wouldve run out. Such an effed up way to lose
just rewatched the final two plays. BOTH had 10 defenders on the field. effing fire Golden. There has to be someone better
yeah inexcusable and that should be the reason to show him the door at the end of the year
About 7 opportunities to end it, and none happened. Ending felt just like the Bush push and happened in the same spot.
I think the botched handoff and the converted 3rd and forever are gonna linger the most…
They also had 10 men on the play coming out of the timeout, which is awful and makes the last play unforgivable because somebody had to notice it on the prior play or every defensive coach in the booth is Mr. Magoo.
Unless we somehow win out and sneak into the playoff, that is Al Golden’s legacy at ND. He’s approaching not-bring-backable and pretty much is a fired-man-walking if we lose again.
i think Steenalized got it right below. Golden is a good DC, not a great one…for all his aggressive tendencies when pressure mattered the most he rush 3 and dropped 8 and nearly lost the game on that play. How did they run 15 plays in 85 seconds?
Also that corner blitz on the play that left the slot receiver running free was really something.
That said let’s not forget how bad the offensive playcalling was on our last three offensive plays! That screen pass was so so dumb, and leaving OSU a timeout for that intentional grounding basically was the ballgame as it turned out. If they had 5 second and a running clock instead of 15 with a stopped clock from the 30 it’s a Hail Mary.
I left that one out but that was a hair-pulling-out call. It didn’t lead to any points, I guess, but holy crap, dude. Your secondary is doing amazingly as it is, stop with the cutesy Tenuta-style blitzes.
He blitzed Morrison! It was insane!
I think we have mid coordinators not really befitting a major college football program, and it showed when push came to shove tonight.
I most definitely got Tenuta vibes tonight
Those final offensive plays were infuriating…Parker called an amazing game, but the end was atrocious. 22 yards the first two plays…just need one more first down and the game was over.
People on the 247 message board are defending the screen pass because there were blockers downfield, but these people apparently haven’t watched ND football in 15 years because this program hasn’t successfully executed screen passes since the Weis era. Just an awful call, even before factoring in that JTT famously has intercepted screens before.
Not sure what the deal was with first down but they had had some success with the misdirection/fake handoff earlier in the game. JTT just blew it up, so probably a bad block. 3rd down call was fine but would have been nice if they got the ball back with zero timeouts.
Also would have been nice if DJ Brown just caught the damn ball.
It was not an amazing game: https://x.com/nd_fb_analytics/status/1705795527403557322?s=46&t=2sUOtt17a2qIWXA43EjdvQ
I so strongly disagree with the kind of shallow stat regurgitation that account publishes. Don’t get me wrong, advanced stats are great. But that account doesn’t do anything to meaningfully interpret and derive insights from them. They simply and rotely point at EPA numbers and say “do this more!”
Notre Dame came out firing in this game. They passed on 8 of 14 plays on the 1st drive (57% passes) and 4 of 6 plays on the 2nd drive (67% passes).
They ultimately finished the first half with a 52% pass rate. They also netted 0 points. Failing to give Hartman an opportunity to cook was not the problem.
On its two 2nd half scoring drives, ND passed on 3 of 13 plays (23%) and 5 of 11 plays (46%). 14 points.
I’m glad they opened up the game seeing if they could stress OSU vertically. I’m also glad they adjusted when they saw that wasn’t working, and rode the RBs and some timely passes to the two touchdowns.
The series Gerard Parker fell on his face though was the last one. You get the ball back with a chance to salt the game away after successfully running the previous two drives, and you call a failed pass to stop the clock and get into 3rd and 15 when all you had to do was keep running — which had been effective in the two immediately preceding series.
I’ll be even more simplistic – we scored 14 points! The offensive game plan was self-evidently bad! I feel like I’m taking crazy pills getting downvoted for this.
https://x.com/nd_fb_analytics/status/1705931961200455743?s=46&t=2sUOtt17a2qIWXA43EjdvQ
100% agree. 14 points in 2023 cannot ever be considered an amazing game for an offensive coordinator.
I’ll disagree and say Parker was bad all night. 14 points with the best QB ND has had in years. That’s not amazing. 3 play-action passes the entire game. Just 7 pass attempts more than 10 yards down the field. 25 total snaps for your Greek god RB. Consider me extremely unimpressed.
Yeah it wasn’t just the last play, right? It was the 2nd-to-last play that they saw and then exploited. Silver platter. Game.
EXACTLY! The 2nd to last play they obviously went the other way…but when Golden didnt fix it they made the smart move and exploited the glaring weakness. My overweight, out of shape, 50 year old body might have been enough to stop him 6 inches earlier…any ND DL would have easily done it.
Devastating. Hate these late games where you get too jacked up to then sleep.
Couldn’t believe they overturned that first drive Hartman run on 4th down. One of those plays you say he’s probably short but can’t overturn. I assume if Hartman makes more of an effort to get there they don’t overturn it. He’s too experienced to not understand that situation.
Definitely a Gerard Parker growing pains game. A few head scratchers a more seasoned guy probably doesn’t make.
On NDs last drive, Estime has a big run and gets up doing the scooping motion cause he knows they’re tired and he’s eating. Immediately gets subbed out?! I know that two-back RB lead play was working, but let the big fella get at least one more carry!
On the 3rd and 19 conversion at the end for OSU, I don’t know when prevent has ever worked and it seemed like the DBs were only guarding against the score? The entire drive you’d been getting pressure with 4 and you know McCord has struggled when the WRs are not wide open so why give up the entire 19 yards of space and sit back and wait for them?
Bertrand sitting 5 yards downfield, in the middle of the field, while they had 0 timeouts left on 3rd and 19 was an odd choice too.
I hesitate to call this a “program defining loss” only because, unlike USC 05, we have another big top 10 matchup (I can’t see dropping us out of the top ten after that, but they may have to drop us to the best 1-loss team idk). We’ll see how freeman manages the team from here. If they can win the next two, huge chance at redemption against our arch rivals.
Talk about pissing a game away, though. 22 yards on two runs in the last drive, then JTT gets loose in the backfield and Hartman panics. There was only one sack in the game and it was huge. Then killing the clock with that screen. Just. Keep. Running. Honestly, I would’ve liked our chances better if he’d pick sixed that screen pass, like he almost did. We’d have gotten the ball back down 3 with time for a Hartman signature two minute drive. Or if DJ had held one to either one of his picks that he had both hands on. Morrison tried to come up with a pick on that fade route at the end too.
Ten men on the field coming out of a timeout is inexcusable. Coaching malpractice
MOTS self reply: I feel like Freeman decided that the problem was playing not to lose and decided to play to win instead. Except he didn’t seem to have a clear idea of what playing to win means. Close game first possession, 35 yd fga – take the points. Play all aside, it was an immature coaching decision to go for it at that point.
Re: the going for it on 4th down vice trying the FG, he mentioned the percentages for 4th and short past the 50 multiple times in his presser as the reason for his decision to “always do that” — and when asked a pointed question (I think by one of the B&G reporters) he doubled down and said a second time he would “always” do that.
Which as someone above said, sort of shows that he learned from last year
“not to play to lose”… but he doesn’t know exactly how to play to win.
Dare I say, this is only his second year as a head coach after all. Two points off that:
1, To Ara Parseghian’s point, to HC at ND, you really need prior HC experience. But we got who we got, and there’s a fair amount to like about who we got. After all — he and his assistants developed the team that looked pretty damn good for what, 70% of the game? I mean, those two long ground game drives in the 2nd half were like, YES. But being present for his learning curve can be awful, as witness our last drive and OSU’s last drive.
2, As for the “program defining loss” : every single one of our Natties came in the coach’s third year. So let’s see how it goes.
And for the balance of this year, Irish Texan’s comment above is right on.
Anyway — merde!
I don’t like to use “program defining loss” either. Just seems overly dramatic to me and something journalists like to use or the talking heads like to say.
After sleeping on it, I’m still (more?) annoyed how they played out the end of the game. That last offensive series was just so bad. I would’ve like to see them keep running as well, it was clear OSU was getting worn down.
Agree. “Program defining loss” is too melodramatic and is a reaction (understandably) influenced by last night’s emotions.
As a stand-alone game, this loss is extremely disappointing and extraordinarily frustrating, but it is not devastating. ND can still win out, adding multiple wins against ranked opponents, and have a shot at making the playoff.
It’s only in the context of every big game going back to 2005 that this one feels devastating. And man does it sting. It hurts. “If not now, when?” But you know what? After sleeping it off, you remember that the past is past. It only matters because we the fans bring that baggage to the table. Rationality says it’s all irrelevant to this season, and this season is still alive for 4-1 ND if they take care of business.
The only way out is through. This loss defines the program only if we the fans let it.
I’ll disagree to an extent and say that we fans don’t have anything to do with it. This loss defines the season if the coaches let it. That means not turning the season around winning the other big games and proving that they can learn from their mistakes. I’m not saying this is going to happen, but you can very easily imagine a post-season narrative that says “after a gutting loss in week five many wondered how Notre Dame would respond, but after an impressive performance, in which they found a second gear against a dominant USC team , they truly proved themselves to be among the elite in football on their way to an impressive CFP run, and their first national title since 1988”
After Stanford last year, sitting at 3-3, I’d lost confidence in Freeman and whether he would be able to figure it out, and he did.
Sitting here with the same kind of feeling. Guardedly optimistic that this team has the mental toughness to bounce back from this and finish the year 10-2, and that Freeman as a second year coach can learn from this. But like last year, I’m in full Missouri Show-Me mode pending what happens next week.
As for the “when” question, we did clearly have the talent to win today. But Ohio Sate “only” has 10 five star recruits on the roster this year, after having 14 last year. (Alabama has 18, Georgia 13). It’s gonna be an uphill battle until we fix that.
Couple other random points.
How epically bad is our turnover luck? I may have mentioned this elsewhere, but when we tipped a pass and they STILL converted a third down, I just had a bad feeling about the rest of the game. Can we get a freakin’ strip sack or INT? I realize we dropped possible INTs, but like the STL Cardinals this year, I feel like the sports gods have decided it’s just not our year.
Let’s not also forget OSU screwed up too. If they take the field goal on the two yard line instead of running a dumb bootleg, then they can go ahead 16-14 with a FG with four minutes left on their penultimate drive instead of running another dumb 4th down play on the jet sweep. Us going for it on fourth from outside the 20 is a lot different than them not taking the easy points from the two yard line.
Self-reply: if ND is another sports franchise, it’s the Pacers. Sometimes we get on the fringe of greatness, but never quite make it over the hump. Other teams have more talent (Jordan vs. Reggie Miller) or we do something dumb to shoot ourselves in foot (last night vs. Malice in the Palace).
It was a very evenly matched game. Both teams played pretty mistake free and both coaches made some questionable calls. Our questionable calls and bad luck just happened to coalesce at exactly the wrong time, resulting in the final drive. After Audrics first down run, we had a 90.9% chance of winning. Then sack, incomplete pass, run, punt. We even could have won after that, but allowed them to convert a 3&10, 4&7, and 3&19
Also, Ryan Day screaming about Lou Holtz postgame reminded me of a Scrubs scene. JDs girlfriend, Tasty Coma Wife, likes drama so he’s always creating it. They’re at a bar and he says “Are you eyeing my woman?”
She points to a big dude and says, “I think it was that guy.” He replies “No, it was definitely that guy.” and points to a little person.
Why you so worked up over an old, ex coach pumping up his former team? You were one play away from losing. Relax.
I also hate when top teams play the “it’s us against the world. Nobody believed in this team” card
Plucky Ohio State, no one believed in them.
To say nothing of the fact that Lou was absolutely right. Your tough team blew two 4th and 1s with finesse play calls that made clear you yourself didn’t think you could out tough ND. You scored 17 points with the most talented offense in the country, and nearly half were gifted to you by an unprovoked colossal screw up by the other sideline. (And the guy STILL barely made it in.)
Michigan is gonna plow those guys into the dirt again, and a small part of me might actually enjoy it this time.
Hell, Penn State might beat them.
Having finished this, I feel like performing self-harm with sharp objects.
Who would not have rushed the field with a last second stop and proclaimed an historic win? A fingers’ difference – DJ intercepting, their DE touching a game-securing pass, Hartman leaning forward a bit for the first down, two stops inside the one with their only score from that.distance possibly due to one player missing, Morison playing like he was Harrison’s second jersey and getting a holding/interference that only a replay could resolve. Perfection is that close.
What recruit watching would not have been impressed with the Irish, their crowd at GameDay and in the stands?
I’m with you Eric. As soon as the game was over I dumped my full beer in the sink and went to bed. I live in Cbus and my brother-in-law is part of the radio team for OSU. I desperately wants to win this game. Not been a fun day.
I didn’t have a problem with the game plan. As many people have said, players have to make plays and when we needed too and had the opportunity too, we didn’t.
Two nitpicks…..obviously only 10 on the field is inexcusable and cannot happen.
Second, there were a handful they left the DB covering merriweather on an island with no safety help over the top. Would’ve been nice to check to a fade once or twice. If nothing else you may draw a PI penalty.
This one cuts deep and is going to take a long time to get over. Hopefully the team can rally because if not we’re staring down another loss next week.